Excuse my hiatus

Yes, I know it has been nigh on a year and a half since Lezzie Lickin's taste buds were tapped and as the title says, you have to excuse my hiatus.

Busy times at work led to a need to put on my PJs as soon as I got in and throw myself on to our super duper comfy sofas along with a tumbler of whisky and episodes of Glee, anything with Mary Portas in or Coronation Street (especially now it has a gay girl storyline). Plus Beth was all blogged out with her work blog, MovieTalk.

Anyhoo, all that sofa surfing, plus some dramatic changes at work have resulted in me feeling somewhat creatively challenged, so hence Lezzie Lickin's is reborn!

Where do I start? Well we've been on annual leave this week and that has manifested itself in a series of culinary delights and disasters. On the delight side, being pampered by trainee chefs and waiting staff at the Vincent Rooms. Six courses for £24 cannot be sniffed at, and they are being trained in the Escoffier technique (Fanny's favourite apparently, Fanny Cradock that is). So, huge white plates dotted with tiny food with a bit of foam on top. But it was good and I would recommend it. On the mediocre site was Hix Oyster and Chop House. A gay girl never really knows what to do with a big meaty portion, and it left me feeling decidedly queer all evening....

Beth and I visited a rainy Oxford yesterday and she took me to one of her old student haunts, the Nosebag. Here, simplicity was key and she informed me that the menu and ambiance had not changed since the late 1980s. A trio of chopped cabbage salads in a Turkish style with fresh herbs and a chocolate brownie placated my temper seeing as it took two hours to drive into the city centre after a somewhat disappointing trip to the Roald Dahl museum in Great Missenden. Let's just say, why do adults have to pay more to enter when the whole museum was geared towards encouraging kids to run riot, as opposed to actually learning something about the great man and his books? Rant over.

Thursday involved some sloe picking in order to make sloe gin. We used to do this with my Nan when my parents lived in Essex. Beth and I took a trip down memory lane with my Mum by visiting Linders Field in Buckhurst Hill where the sloes used to be abundant. Imagine our horror to find that all our bushes had been trimmed! Sloe bushes I mean. Anyhoo, we found some and we now have some sloes gently marinading with sugar in a bottle of gin to be consumed during the festive season. We also made blackberry whiskey, which should be fun!

On a final note, we visited Gay's the Word on Monday where I stocked up on literature to help research the book I'm writing. Yes, I have finally got round to putting pen to paper to write that wartime lesbian love story that I've wanted to write for years. I have only written one passage so far, but if you want to see it to provide your critique, then message me. I also tried my hand at a sex scene, but keeping that under wraps right now...

Cheeks and lips

I've had the week off work this week to celebrate both our anniversary and my birthday. Naturally for me this goes hand in hand with some decadent dining....and a few bottles of wine and a couple of martinis.

Have you ever sampled braised ox cheeks or tulips? These were just some of the delights on the tasting menu at Club Gascon. I know in these days of the credit crunch it's highly frowned upon to be splurging out on such extravagances at £75 per person (inclusive of wines), but I just felt the need.

Well, I can highly recommend it.....the menu is divine. Plus, a bonus of the credit crunch is that service in restaurants and shops seems to have gone up ten notches, so I don't resent that 12.5% service charge so much when the waiter genuinely seems to care about his product.

The Come Dine With Me Dream

We were watching Celebrity Come Dine with Me recently and that got us thinking about who we'd love to be dining with if one of us were a celebrity who'd been invited to feature on that show.

Obviously, the ideal fellow contestants are celebrities who are fun, have great conversation, who won't cause an argument and who can cook.

These are the four we were both in agreement on - yes, we know only one of us could be the fifith diner and neither of us are celebrities anyway, but this is just a game:

Stephen Fry - great wit, highly intelligent but not condescending, and we're sure he'd mix a fabulous cocktail.

Dolly Parton - witty, warm, charming, pre and post-dinner entertainment, boob jokes and great southern cooking.

Larry David - funny, potentially heated conversations - Charlotte always worries that she says the wrong thing, but he would undoubtedly eclipse any faux pas she might make, and he loves food even though he may well not be able to cook.

Sue Perkins - another hilarious wit and following her stint on The Supersizers Go, tasting the stomach-churning delicacies of times gone by we know that the foody conversations would be fascinating.

Let us know who you'd choose. We'd love to know.

Fancy a tipple and a dance?

Do you sometimes watch a film that has a bar or club scene in it and think "I would really like to go to that place!" I'm always doing it. Maybe it's because I like the demon juice too much or maybe it's because I'm always on the search for the perfect watering hole or place to dance. Here are some of my favourites:

The Kit Kat Club - Cabaret
Putting all that horrible pre-World War 2 Nazi business aside, the Kit Kat Klub looks like a great place to let loose and down a few. Liza with a Z performs nightly, exotic clientele rule the roost and wild horses would have a drag me away from wanting to get up on stage to do a turn. Willkommen, bienevue, welcome indeed!

Chez Lui - Victor/Victoria
Another bar which is as camp as a row of tents and has July Andrews doing drag! "When people speak of gay Paree,They think that when they say Paree is gay,They mean that gay Paree is gay!"Cabaret is provided by the insatiable Toddy who loves a warm hand on his entrance and greets his guests with equal aplomb "Thank you, thank you, you're most kind. In fact, you're every kind."

Odyssey 2001 - Saturday Night Fever
For the soundtrack and the fact that the dance floor has those flashing chequerboard lights.

Studio 54 - 54 and Last Days of Disco (loosely based)
The ultimate disco. Wall to wall celebrities (Truman Capote...check, Liza Minnelli...check, Debbie Harry...check, Any Warhol...check), fabulous music and probably the best fashion decade ever(1970's).

Coyote Ugly Saloon - Coyote Ugly
If only to dance on top of a burning bar in cowboy boots.

I am sure there are plenty more, but where would you like to go?

Hot sausage

The boys next door invited us to partake of their hot sausage last weekend. It was fat, juicy and delicious. We, in return, let them sample our marshmallows, which they found most moist and tempting to the tongue.

No, we were not engaging in some kind of sordid orgy, but rather sitting around a bonfire in the back garden roasting and toasting the above products. M and his partner D like nothing more than a good burn up, M being particularly adept at lighting a fire. Perhaps there was nothing else to do growing up in Poland in the 70's and 80's than to set fire to things?

Anyway, we tasted some lovely kielbasa, some vegetables cooked in a Dutch oven in the fire (cabbage of course, with it being a Polish party) and we provided the marshmallows. On D's recommendation we ate them between two 'wine biscuits'. No, we weren't too sure what he meant either, but it turned out that 'wine biscuits' is just a New Zealand word for rich tea biscuits.

Many people have questioned whether it is permitted to have a bonfire in the back garden, but our council states that it is ok as long as it isn't disturbing anyone. So seeing as the neighbours don't complain, we go ahead.

And I am sure the heat warms the cockles of the men 'cruising' in the woods at the back of our houses! Perhaps we should go with D's suggestion and open a tea stand at the end of the garden as well. Nothing like a bit of warm sustenance after being 'exposed' the elements!